Friday, August 26, 2005

 

Nederlands Continued...

continuing form the last post

Woody, a blue eyed, bearded, nice guy explained it to me.
"Yeah, I was just driving through," I said.
"Uh-oh," he laughed, intimating that that's how people get pulled in to Nederlands. That's where I was. Nederlands. And I could see how that worked: always looking for a nice place to hide away and write a book, this place was sticking to me, after one Latte. And if I was just drifting through, I'm sure I'd find a reason to stay a while. It's that kind of place.

Getting it's name, rumor has it, by the original mountain men who thought it looked liked the Netherlands, but couldn't pronounce it correctly. My question: how the hell did those mountain men know what the Netherlands looked like?

Back to Woody, who is the only person whom I've told about grad school, that I didn't have to explain it was a good thing. "Wow, that's amazing, man, congratulations." And what's amazing to me is that he gets it. Then he politely takes his leave by telling me he and his pals are off to the mountains to pick magic mushrooms. "I sell them up in Boulder, at a diner, and do pretty well."

Right. Then there's Russell and Pete, out back. Fiftyish, bearded (of course) and the town talkers. "Small towns don't have much to see," Russell says," but what you hear makes up for it." Apparently. Here's something: even in the mountains, there's slumlords. The circle sits outside talking about "Sam." The fucking asshole, as he's affectionately called. "He owns all those houses out there. And three of the hostels up in Denver." Ching - now I knew why the hostels seemed so seedy. Run by a slumlord of the mountains! Apparently he gets people to live in his houses, then takes their deposits and kicks them out, and finds ways to get away with it. Russell wants to kill him, he says.

So it is - everywhere you go, there is a slumlord, a dark figure in the shadows, corrupted and abusive, making capitalism work for them, the way it was meant to work for those who have the real savy to push it to its limits.

Then Mr. Russell tells us that he didn't go to 'nam- didn't go to Canada ("like those others," he says mockingly), but fought his draft in court. He won, he says, was acquitted, but was sworn to a ten-year gag order about the whole situation. His buddy Pete, who did go to 'nam, says nothing.

I'm not sure what's taller, the mountains or the stories, but I believe them all the same.

Then, for a topper, there's a huge double rainbow behind us, in the falls of the mountains. You could clearly see where it starts and ends, right in town.

"That's special," someone says calmly, and I am surprised, because everything special seems quite ordinary to everyone here.

"I'll see you when you come back," Woody says. And I'm sure I will.

But for now, Mo and I were off to Rocky Mountain NP. We scooted through Boulder quickly, and made it to RM around five. We took the long drive up the eastern side of the park, which goes way up into 12,000 ft, into the tundra. We looked longingly at the ice patches in the curves of the mountains, where the wind gets fierce, once a distant splotch of white from the bottom, now almost within spitting range. The wind is a force up there- getting out of the car to take some photos, I'm freezing, and almost knocked over. The sound whipping down the sides of the mountains, cruising over the treetops is something you can't quite hear anywhere else, and there's a feeling that comes with it, a feeling certain places seem to have, because of how rare there are, how powerful the forces of earth that goes into creating and forming those places, and what it means to be there at a particular point in your life. I have to apologize here for sounding tacky and sentimental about it, especially for a city boy like myself, but I dare anyone to go to these little spots on the planet and not get a little gooish about their connection with nature.

I wonder what the Romantics would have written about if they'd seen some of the power of the Americas?

It's getting harder and harder to conceive of living somewhere without being around this kind of beauty.

So. We headed back down the mountain to the visitor center, to plan our camp trip into the mountains. Two days. We choose a place isolated- Spruce Lake. We start our hike at dusk. It starts along a stream - that section is about two miles. Then, we took a wrong turn, which lead us up, but the wrong way, which we didn't figure out until we climbed about 800 ft over 3/4 of a mile. That sucked. By the time we back tracked, the sun was gone, and we broke out our flashlights.
Then next stretch was ridiculous. We climbed steadily about 1,000 ft or so. Half-way through, we were drenched in our own sweat, despite the dropping temperature in the thinning mountain air. Our packs must have weighed about 60 lbs, and we had a large sack of food and water, which we took turns carrying (that was a killer).
We were ready for a blood transfusion by time we finished that stretch, and Mo wanted to camp there, which was Fern Lake. But I insisted we go on, because, well, just because. So we took a short break next to a giant waterfall that spanned most of the distance we just climbed. Unfortunately, we couldn't really see much of it in the dark, but we could hear it's roaring on the rocks, feel the spray of water and positive ions bouncing onto us. Mo filled his water bottle from it, balancing precariously on a rock, while I looked on nervously. Then we continued. Another two miles, another 500 ft. Worse, was that it was an "unfinished" trail, from that point on. Which meant, that we basic did rock climbing. And in the dark, we had to stop several times and scout ahead, one of us going on without a pack to see if the trail continued.

Finally, finally, finally, after about five hours of the most rigorous hiking I've ever done, we found Spruce Lake. We yelled, practicaly collapsed, and laughed for several minutes, before the reality of hunger and cold took over. We ate, tried desperately to find the campsite in the dark, and then finally, got to sleep.

And yes, it does get rather chilly sleeping in a hammock at 10,500 ft. I wore all the clothes I brought with me at the same time.

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